Hampshire Place Apartments — Local services in Los Angeles

RUN far from this building (and any other Equity Residential property while you are at it). Equity seems only concerned with extracting profit from its buildings while cutting corners and driving up prices whenever possible.

I just moved out after finishing my one-year lease. Full disclosure: I'm writing this review because, when I moved my stuff out 2 days early and let Hampshire Place enter my unit so they could get started on cleaning, they CHARGED ME A TWO DAY EARLY MOVE OUT FEE OF $132. I could have just kept my mouth shut and kept possession of the unit until the end of the lease term, but I was instead penalized for trying to be nice.

I'm done being nice, and instead I will honestly share what I experienced during my year at Hamphire Place: one extremely aggravating issue in my unit, which I cannot disclose because I signed an NDA. I had to continually chase down the staff to get any resolution. at least 6 instances of emergency or planned water shut-offs lasting for hours each. The pipes and the water boiler were constantly having issues. one night where the pipes in my sink and the neighbor's sink completely backed up, filling them with black water. one day where the transformer supplying power to the building completely failed. It took over 12 hours for the power to be restored. two days where the system for remotely opening the building doors failed. The garage gates were left wide open during those periods. multiple days where the trash chutes were jammed due to misuse by residents (granted, not Equity's fault). months of the hot tub being unavailable because maintenance workers had to drill underneath it from the parking lot below. Perhaps another instance of faulty pipes, but we were not given details. package theft. The delivery drivers are instructed to place packages at residents' doors instead of in the glass-doored lobby, but some of them just won't do it. There is a package room which can only be accessed by USPS or the staff, but sometimes it was impossible to find a staff member to help retrive those deliveries (see below). dozens of instances where the extremely loud night security alarm would be triggered, waking me and many other residents up. This "alarm" is supposed to be the solution for the lack of 24-hour security, but obviously it does not deter unauthorized people from entering the premises late at night. an increasingly diminishing presence from the staff. It started with an email that they the leasing office would longer be handling resident issues, and that we should email the new "resident experience team" with any issues. Of course, this email often went ignored. Next, we received an email that the staff members would only be available by appointment only for any reason unless there was an "office day." Perhaps they were tired of residents continually complaining?

As a bonus, some issues from other residents: Multiple incidents reported by other community members on the resident portal. Of course I can't independently verify these claims, but there were such wonderful stories as a resident on the top floor whose ceiling leaked heavily from the rain and was not fixed for months, a resident who complained that one of the elevators was regularly filled with trash, and a resident who complained that an unauthorized person entered her first floor unit to take a shower. There was also a resident who told me that the housing authority found multiple violations when they inspected her unit, and she was legally allowed to break her lease. However, when she emailed the office to inititate move-out procedures she was stonewalled for days, and ended up camping out at the office door for hours until someone finally showed up on the "in-office day".

There's more, but Google has a character limit. Do yourself a favor and find somewhere else to live. Hampshire Place may be cheap for the area, but you will certainly be paying for it...

DO NOT LIVE HERE OR IN ANY PROPERTY MANAGED BY THE FIRM 'EQUITY'.

Abysmal - I would rate 0 stars if Google allowed for it. Where to even start...

They frequently shut off the water or hot water with little OR no warning, sometimes multiple times a week and there are still so many co stant water issues in the building. The sinks on the first floor back up often and smell terrible when they do.

They claim to not have resources to do full repairs on several issue in the building, but have recently undertaken a massive landscaping and pool re-model that absolutely costs more than it would to fix basic plumbing issues.

They rotate the front deck representative so regularly that they never have any idea of what is actually going on with the building or are even aware of issues that were brought to the previous rep. This seems like a very transparent attempt to prevent tennants from establishing any sort of relationship with representatives of the company.

There are often homeless people lurking in the building, and while they have never done anything violent that I know of, the office also has 0 interest in doing anything about them or how they are getting in.

They recently installed alarms on the exterior of the building, austensably to prevent said homeless people from entering the alleys around the building. However these alarms are both completely ineffective and Incredible horrible to live around. They go off all hours of the night screaming "warning, warning the authorities have been notified" loud enough that you can hear multiple dogs in the building barking and whimpering. these alarms routinely go off at all times between 5pm and 5am and frequently prevent tennants from sleeping, as they are meer feet away from several apartments windows. These alarms have also done absolutely nothing to deter the homeless presence around the building and have only succeeded in torturing tennants for months and preventing them from sleeping. We tracked it and there are frequently 2 week stretches where the largest gap between the alarms going off was less than 10 hours, and many nights they went off nearly every hour or more. When I tell you these alarms are loud, it's an understatement. Unless your ears are covered completely or plugged with your finger they will be ringing like you were in the front row at a metal concert from jsut 1 round of alarms.

The elevators in the building are not up to code, and are several months out of date on their inspections. I'm sure the building knows they will not pass Inspection. There are panels missing on the interior of the elevators, the tracking system on the elevators has not worked for years, any time you arrive on a floor it's says "lost position" and sometimes you need to wait for a minute + for the doors to even open.

They Installed electronic locks on all the units front doors but have ignored and denied any requests from tennants for keys to these locks (since they run out of battery). And also have 0 record of who knows the codes to these locks.

Maintenance requests often takes weeks or more to be acknowledged and actioned, however when the building needs updates like new locks Installed the maintenance team is there the next day so they clearly just have 0 sense of urgency when requests are from tennants.

For a building charging nearly $2000/month for the smallest and most basic apartment they offer this is all embarrassing. Go live literally anywhere else and you will have a...

For people who are consider moving into this apt, BE AWARE of what you are getting into!!!!

The pictures I uploaded show what my studio room looks like right now. They are installing washing machine and dryers in my room. The project, as they claim, is gonna take 6-8 weeks or even longer. The half of the room is gone, covered by white plastic sheets. The entire closet is gone, the AC is not usable (oh wonderful summer), there’s dirt on the floor, and even more, part of the floor is removed (nice view to the pk lot since I’m on the first floor). I talked to the management and asked how and why am I gonna live and work in this place for the next 2 months with my $1,700 rent/month. Basically, they believe that since I signed a contract says that they are gonna have this project, so they can do whatever they want and I just have to suck it up. The manager told me the contract never specifies anything b/c anything could happen during the construction. I asked what if now you tell me that the construction is gonna take a YEAR, and the manager told me “YES IT COULD.” Then I asked about having worker in and out freely for the next two months. He told me that they have already notified me the date when the project initially started (by dropping a paper notice at my front door and sending out general email about the project), they are just allowed to have access to my apt. I asked for more specific scheduled dates, and he said there is no way we could project when the workers are gonna be in my room. At the end I said what about I will give some suggestions. The managers said impatiently that “I think we’re good here. I don’t want to argue with you. We have done our best.” I said again so you don’t wanna hear my suggestions and he repeated what he just said a couple times. I asked for if there is any higher management people I could talk to, but he refused to give any.

For this apt, they think if you said yes on the contract, they can do ANYTHING they want. They don’t care about the residents. Another example is that when I first rented this place, I didn’t move in for the first month but I had furniture and some stuff in the room. Then on the day when I actually moved in, I opened the door, I saw dirt everywhere, three wholes on the floor that I could see through the pk lot, the balcony door was wide open, and the lights and fan were on. Then I figured out that construction workers were in about a week ago and my apt was like this for an entire week. Then I attempted to communicate to the manager (same guy) for so many times. I asked for $20 refund of my electricity bill for that month and it took me 2 months to do that.

So please think through it before you move in. When they claim that everything is good for the residents, they are the one who’s getting the true benefit eventually. They are allowed to do renovation while having people paying for the room at the same time. They will raise the rent after having new equipment in the room. Smart deal. I’m paying $1,700/month to live in a construction area for the next two months. And who’s what’s gonna happen during construction. It could...